Expert Q&A: Manufacturing deals with 'loss of the son'

ROCKFORD — Ed Youdell just completed his first year as head of the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association and it’s clear to him what his group’s mission has become — find the next generation of manufacturers.

ROCKFORD — Ed Youdell just completed his first year as head of the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association and it’s clear to him what his group’s mission has become — find the next generation of manufacturers.

FMA is one of the Rock River Valley’s largest nonprofits. It serves the metal processing, forming and fabricating industries, publishing business-to-business magazines, e-newsletters, vendor directories and websites.

Based on Featherstone Road in Rockford, FMA has more than 2,100 members working to improve the metal forming and fabricating industry.

On Friday, FMA coordinated the inaugural Manufacturing Day, drawing high school students to manufacturing businesses across the country.

What’s the impetus for Manufacturing Day?

“The most important thing we wanted to do is build awareness of manufacturing as a viable career. We feel if we can get kids inside plants that they’ll see it’s clean, it’s safe, it’s high technology.

“Many of the job shops here in Rockford and the U.S. use technology to bend metal, shape metal, cut metal with CNC user interfaces, laser technology. It’s very advanced and the public doesn’t have any sense of that. They tend to think about how it was 75 years ago.”

So many generations of families have been in manufacturing why do you feel you have to deliver that message?

“Well, we had the grandfather. We had the father. But we’ve lost the son.

“A couple of things have happened. In the education system, there was this direction that everyone must go to college. That wasn’t as prominent in the ‘50s and ‘60s when the grandfathers and fathers were moving through.

Our workforce, as baby boomers have aged, our average age in manufacturing is in the mid-50s. There isn’t a pipeline coming behind them to replace them and we should be able to attract the best and brightest to manufacturing.”

Has the association done any estimates on what kind of shortage we’re looking at?

“The latest estimate is 600,000 jobs through the National Association of Manufacturing and Manufacturing Institute. That’s across the country and that’s right now.

“If you talk to any manufacturer their biggest issue is finding skilled help. It’s the No. 1 challenge.”

Historically, people would graduate high school and walk down to Greenlee or National Lock and get a job where they would teach them how to do the work. What is different today?

“Many of the jobs you are talking about were lower skill, entry-level positions. Those low skill jobs are the ones that are gone and are gone forever.

Now everything has shifted to a mid-skill level. That person doesn’t come out of high school prepared to work in a manufacturing environment.

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“That’s not to say they can’t be trained, but you see a lot of businesses trying to partner with technical schools and community colleges to attract students who have some natural skill of working with their hands and working with their heads.”

“It’s really a lost talent and it’s not nurtured. High school vocational programs for the most part are gone across the country because they are more expensive to maintain, liabilities are higher to maintain so the schools tend not to have those programs. We have to somehow fill that pipeline of midskill workers.”

What happens if we don’t fill that pipeline?

“We’re going to have a skilled labor shortage, a significant one within 10 years. As these Baby Boomers age and retire, manufacturing will suffer because they can’t find the labor.

“The other side of that is that there will be more dependence on automation because manufacturers are problem solvers. They’ll innovate and find ways to make up for that shortage.”

Isn’t that one of the difficulties in attracting people into manufacturing, the worry that they might learn a skill only to see a machine take that job in 15 years?

“What we see is the companies that are employing technology are more competitive. They can redirect people to higher value activities within their organization.

“It’s a misconception that a machine is going to replace 30 people. It’s just not going to. You may lose some, but you are a more productive operation. Then you can take those people who are doing this and move them over to another area to grow and expand.

“You have to have a thriving manufacturing sector to have a thriving economy because of the jobs they support outside of manufacturing. It’s called the multiplier effect. They support the dry cleaner, the bakery, the bank, the newspaper.

How wide is this initial manufacturing day effort?

“Here in Rockford we had 15 companies sign up for tours and six high schools are sending students. Across the country there are 220 events. In Ohio, we have company bringing in 15 students in two days. A company in Alabama is bringing in 140 students and they’ll have a welding simulator from the local community college to give kids hands on experience. We’re off to a great start.”